'Bingo Night at the Fire Hall' by Barbara Holland (1997)

﻿ "Bingo Night at the Fire Hall is a passionate elegy for the passing of one of the most beautiful counties in America. Barbara Holland has written a lovely book." --Russell Baker

"In 1990, Barbara Holland inherited her mother's summer cabin in the northern Blue Ridge Mountains," reads the jacket flap copy for Bingo Night at the Fire Hall. "She quit her job in Philadelphia, said good-bye to friends and family, and moved into a different world.

"On the mountain she wrestled with winter isolation, stoked the woodstove, and learned to live with bears in the trash and mountain lions on the lawn. Lonely, she found a part-time job at the county newspaper down in the valley and earned the right to sit on a barstool at the tavern, where she listened to the people whose families had always lived there, in the little country towns and their outlying farms...."